Sport and the 'Dark Triad': how does personality actually affect performance?

In his latest Mind Room column, Jonathan Harding speaks to the authors of a new study examining how narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism influence sporting relationships

From the brilliance of Simone Biles to the stamina of Alex Yee and the incredible longevity of Mijain Lopez, the Olympics in Paris delivered many memorable moments. One of the most startling moments came, for those watching on television, in between the events, though.

Nike ran an advert following the motto of 'winning isn't for everyone', starting the 90-second ad with the narrator asking: "Am I a bad person?" The ad would go on to show a host of Nike athletes, and somewhat alarming child athletes, whilst the narrator listed traits that the aforementioned bad person had. These traits included deceptive behaviour, obsession, selfishness, hunger for power, being maniacal and delusional, having no respect for competition, zero remorse, empathy or compassion. The constant reiteration of the question - ‘am I bad a person?’ - was antagonistic.

While not new, the advert sparked a conversation about what it takes to win in sport and indeed, whether such 'bad' traits are a necessary part of the equation. Two months before the Olympics, Nottingham Trent University completed a study specifically looking at personalities known as the ‘Dark Triad’, which consists of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism.

Dr. Laura Healy, senior author, and Joseph Stanford, lead author, investigated more than 300 elite athletes and their coaches focusing on personality and relationship quality, and the work was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

"Historically, they [the Dark Triad traits] have been deemed, you know, to be like terrible traits," Healy says.

"People who are high in these traits are awful people, probably because there is some correlational research which suggests that perhaps people who may have done criminal behaviour actually may display higher levels of them.

“We would certainly take a more nuanced and more neutral stance to it, namely that these are just traits, they are ways in which we can understand human personality.

“They are present, to some extent, in all of us, and we probably shouldn't necessarily isolate them and think of them as just if you're high enough, you're likely to do X or you're likely to be this kind of person, because that's not necessarily taking into account some of the other personality traits that we might we might have.

“Narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism are deemed to be sort of malevolent traits, but they don't necessarily mean you're an awful person or that you're going to have terrible outcomes."

Herein lies a truth. Ads sell and are great entertainment, but are rarely reflections of what is happening in the field of research.

"I think it does a wonderful job at showing the extremes of what these traits can do," Stanford says of the Nike advert.

"The people they associate the words to, we don't know how high or low they are, right? The advert’s there to sell an image of it, and I think what it does fantastically well is showcase how sport can facilitate these traits, and actually question whether they are bad or not?

"The person who always sticks out to me is Lance Armstrong. You could argue that there's some really challenging behaviours there, to his teammates as well as his athletes, but is that the sole reason that makes him successful? Maybe, but there's also a trail of destruction behind it.

“So it's also about questioning that, and actually if he did have better relationships with his teammates, maybe the Machiavellianism would have been would have been glossed over a little bit more. How far is too far? I would say when it starts damaging relationships is probably when it manifests too far.”

Healy points to the recent Olympics as evidence of the need to carefully consider the message peddled by Nike’s advert.

"It seems to like resonate with probably an outdated view of elite sport and coaching that the only way to get successful results is through perhaps particularly authoritarianism, and I just don't think we've seen that in relation to the recent Olympics," she argues.

"Look at Simone Biles. I think this is a really good example of where the Nike advert isn't in tune with what athletes are doing. So you look at how she and Jordan Chiles celebrated Rebecca Andrade winning the gold on the floor, bowing to her. You've won and we want to celebrate that. That doesn't suggest that these are people which we're never going to talk to and we don't have relationships with, even though they are our competitors."

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Indeed, what is at the real heart of Stanford and Healy's research is relationships. Much has been made of the idea of Dark Triad traits giving advantages to those in high-performance environments such as elite sport, but before this work not much was known about the impact on relationships, particularly between athlete and coach.

As the press release states, the study found that the more self-centred a coach was – or the higher their level of narcissism – the less responsive they were to their athlete’s needs. At the same time, if a coach and athlete were similarly self-centred, they would feel less trusting of one another. When coaches reported high levels of ruthlessness – or psychopathy – the less they liked, were committed to, and were willing to do their best for their athletes.

"What we're kind of most interested in the paper is rather than just bad people do bad things, but actually how can people have relationships in these spaces, which is absolutely necessary for success," Stanford explains.

"We were really interested in understanding how do we get people, irrespective of the levels of traits that they have, to be able to have a successful relationship? Given we know that in sport there may be a higher prevalence of people with higher levels of these traits, how does that work?" asks Healy.

"There are several personality profiles and characters and sort of combinations of personality characteristics which may lead to people being successful. And we probably don't just want to focus on we have to be high in this, and you have to be high in that.

“We want to focus on if you experience an athlete who is high in these respective traits and you yourself have this combination of traits, how can you work together in order to get the for you both to get the best out of each other?"

Stanford explains that a lot has been done in the romantic space around these traits, but in high-performance environments less is known. You still want to dominate the opposition, but you want to do it with the best people on our teams.

"We might want to go against them but be with us," Stanford says.

Personality traits are impacted by and developed through life experiences, but at what point did the study consider the impacts of varying environments across the course of the lives of the athletes and coaches involved?

Stanford explained they took an interactional approach, recognising the natural elements in the brain such as if you have a bigger hippocampus then you are more likely to be neurotic and worry a bit more, or the bigger the hypothalamus the more extroverted you're going to be. But there was also plenty of consideration for the nurture impact and how big a role childhood and early adolescence plays.

"The stories that that we tell ourselves really affects how we might act in the future,” says Healy.

“So we looked at the interaction between the two in the paper. There's obviously how a coaches or an athlete's personality affect their own view of their relationship, but we also controlled for how someone's personality that we're in a relationship with would affect it as well. For example, how me being in a relationship - if I was low in narcissism - would affect the person I was coaching and their relationship.

"What was probably most interesting was that, especially narcissism, how similarity really impacted the relationship. So a greater level of dissimilarity enhanced the relationship. You're more likely to have a more quality relationship if one or other person was high and you were low. Challenges seem to potentially come a little bit more when you were the same level, and that could both be high, low or in the middle. And we seem to think that comes down to this sort of jostling for power."

The impact for coaches might be the presence of a coach for themselves, or a second set of eyes, as author and coach Cody Royle neatly explained in his book given the same name. Healy and Stanford believe more research is required before firm suggestions can be given to coaches, but off the back of this study they are developing strategies to help get coaches and athletes better aligned to their partner's traits. Developing better understanding of what behaviours are associated with certain traits would be a great start.

"We've got a coach and an athlete and they have their individual personality traits. Do they essentially recognize that this person is really high in this trait, and that actually might mean they need to go about things in a different way to an athlete or a coach who is low in that trait?" asks Healy.

Stanford, who has worked in this field directly as a swimming coach, knows that the problem with trait tests is that they get done, people better understand who they are and then it goes in the drawer. The next step is missing.

"What we need to look at is how does that affect the people that we're working with and how, most importantly, how do the people we're working with affect our personality?

“The reality of it is, because of this biological nature, you can't really change people. It's really about working with the the grain of those people and understanding what you're bringing to the relationship, but also understanding what you can't bring."

So what is the message we want to be sending to the young athletes and coaches of tomorrow, and the aspiring ones of today? Ultimately, it's that all personality types have the potential to be successful in elite sport if supported in all areas of their wellbeing and there's recognition that more understanding of personality traits are required.

"What we don't want to do is say all sports people have to be super competitive, super ruthless at all costs," says Stanford.

"Actually, what we really want to get is for people to be themselves, be you, work with who you have to work with to be as successful as you can, and then you'll get the best results.

“Those people didn't care what other people were doing. They concentrated on themselves and and built strong relationships. There's no guarantee, but it's going to maximise your chances, and I think that's probably a more sensible approach to the Olympics and high-performance domains in general."

Both Healy and Stanford felt that Australian woman Jemima Montag's interview after winning bronze in the women's 20km walk in Paris was the best example of this balance in action.

"It's a careful balance of wanting that medal but not needing it," Montag said.

"It's really a nuanced difference, so not needing it for your own self-worth or feeling that people love you but wanting it and saying, 'Yeah, I'm willing to give this a crack and be tough.' And if it doesn't happen the sun will rise tomorrow."

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